Scheduling: The Spanish Grand Prix

This weekend the Formula 1 roadshow, along with the GP2 and GP3 Series, moves onto Europe, with round 5 taking place at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain. Both BBC and Sky Sports are live this weekend for the second time this season. Here’s how the schedule shapes up:

Thursday 10th May
14:00 to 14:30 – F1: Press Conference (Sky Sports F1)

Friday 11th May
08:45 to 10:50 – F1: Practice 1 (Sky Sports F1)
08:55 to 10:35 – F1: Practice 1 (BBC Red Button)
10:55 to 11:35 – GP2: Practice (Sky Sports F1)
12:45 to 14:50 – F1: Practice 2 (Sky Sports F1)
12:55 to 14:35 – F1: Practice 2 (BBC Red Button)
14:55 to 15:35 – GP2: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
17:00 to 18:00 – The F1 Show (Sky Sports F1)

Saturday 12th May
08:40 to 09:20 – GP3: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
09:45 to 11:15 – F1: Practice 3 (Sky Sports F1)
09:55 to 11:05 – F1: Practice 3 (BBC Red Button)
12:00 to 14:35 – F1: Qualifying (Sky Sports F1)
12:10 to 14:15 – F1: Qualifying (BBC One)
14:35 to 16:00 – GP2: Race 1 (Sky Sports F1)
16:15 to 17:10 – GP3: Race 1 (Sky Sports F1)

Sunday 13th May
08:20 to 09:15 – GP3: Race 2 (Sky Sports F1)
09:30 to 10:35 – GP2: Race 2 (Sky Sports F1)
11:30 to 16:30 – F1: Race (Sky Sports F1)
12:10 to 15:15 – F1: Race (BBC One)
15:15 to 16:15 – F1: Forum (BBC Red Button)
16:30 to 17:30 – F1: Legends: John Surtees (Sky Sports F1)

As expected, Sky Sports are not planning to add presentation to the GP2 or GP3 Series for the European rounds and it seems are (like with GP2 in Malaysia and Bahrain) only taking the World Feed coverage, with commentary from Will Buxton and Jerome d’Ambrosio. As reported on this blog last month, Johnny Herbert will be back with the Sky Sports F1 team for Spain through to Britain.

UPDATE on 9th May: Have added the Thursday Press Conference to the schedule above.

How much airtime F1 Digital+ had back ten years ago

One thing that I very briefly noted in part 3 of ‘The Verdict so Far’ series was F1 Digital+’s airtime and how long they were on-air before and after practice sessions for their lone season in the UK back in 2002, which I thought would make for an interesting summary in a short blog.

Using a European race as the template, you can see F1 Digital+’s on-air times here, with the European race schedule, for this case Belgium here.

For Friday’s, F1 Digital+ stayed live for the entire day, although the gap between practice sessions was must smaller than what it was now. They were on-air for four hours, with the drivers’ on track for two x 1 hour sessions. As a result, they had half an hour build-up, a gap of approximately one hour in the middle with half an hour of analysis afterwards. On Saturday’s, the two morning practice sessions were 45 minutes each, with a half an hour gap in the middle. Again, F1 Digital+ had half an hour of build-up, and and half an hour of analysis afterwards.

Moving onto Qualifying and the Race however, the airtime was similar to that of ITV F1. For Qualifying they, like with practice, had half an hour of build-up and half an hour of analysis. ITV F1 in the middle of their contract had 30 minutes of build-up for Qualifying (after initially only having 20 minutes of Qualifying build-up for 1997 through to 1999), with 20 minutes approximately of analysis.

F1 Digital+’s warm-up programme on Sunday mornings was two and a half hours, although this is due to the Porsche Supercup, but the build-up is again longer than what Sky Sports F1 have for their practice sessions. For the race, F1 Digital+ had similar on-air length to that of ITV for the pre-show, but like with Qualifying their analysis after the Race was more comprehensive than ITV F1, with F1 Digital+ not going off-air until 15:30 (significantly later than ITV F1 at most races). Of course, F1 Digital+ was only experienced by ten thousand viewers at most per race, the highest figure being twenty five thousand viewers for the 2002 Malaysian Grand Prix. The rest of the three and a half million viewers had to put up with the ITV F1 service, which I shall look at briefly mid-week.

The Twitter Outlook

One of the things that I will be doing in this broadcasting blog is looking at the social media side of things, as I feel this encompasses broadcasting, in that broadcasting nowadays also covers social media.

The Twitter Outlook is a post I shall do once a week (there or there about), and the purpose is quite simple – to list the top ten F1 drivers’ and teams’ with the highest Twitter followers, as well as those with the biggest increases and smallest increases. In the rare occasion I will maybe note if any driver or team actually loses followers. Losing followers is incredibly rare, although I recall in the football Barcelona losing several thousand followers when Chelsea beat them to reach the UEFA Champions League Final.

Every F1 team has a Twitter account, while the only three drivers’ not to have a Twitter account are Sebastian Vettel, Michael Schumacher and Kimi Raikkonen.

Drivers
01 – 918,347 – Jenson Button (McLaren)
02 – 778,415 – Lewis Hamilton (McLaren)
03 – 438,569 – Fernando Alonso (Ferrari)
04 – 389,998 – Bruno Senna (Williams)
05 – 316,482 – Mark Webber (Red Bull)
06 – 181,923 – Sergio Perez (Sauber)
07 – 145,326 – Nico Rosberg (Mercedes)
08 – 141,523 – Heikki Kovalainen (Caterham)
09 – 140,571 – Pastor Maldonaldo (Williams)
10 – 121,987 – Pedro de la Rosa (HRT)
11 – 109,995 – Paul di Resta (Force India)
12 – 99,592 – Narain Karthikeyan (HRT)
13 – 71,341 – Felipe Massa (Ferrari)
14 – 67,348 – Vitaly Petrov (Caterham)
15 – 66,804 – Timo Glock (Marussia)
16 – 64,216 – Nico Hulkenberg (Force India)
17 – 47,753 – Kamui Kobayashi (Sauber)
18 – 36,938 – Romain Grosjean (Lotus)
19 – 23,710 – Daniel Ricciardo (Toro Rosso)
20 – 17,048 – Jean-Eric Vergne (Toro Rosso)
21 – 10,310 – Charles Pic (Marussia)

The drivers’ list in some places there are surprises, but the overall top few in the pecking order should not really be a surprise. The two main British drivers’ of Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton inevitably lead the way, with Button very close to breaking 1 million followers, and will probably do so in the next few months. Behind them, is Fernando Alonso. Normally, that is not surprising – but the fact that he has only had a Twitter account for one and a half months and already jumped up to third and amassed over half a million followers means that he will probably end up breaking 1 million at some point this year as well. While Alonso has his Spanish army, Bruno Senna and Mark Webber follow behind with their Brazilian and Australian armies respectively, both with only 300 thousand people following their activities. One of the reasons as well I think these five have many more followers than the rest is that they tend to tweet regularly which is important for keeping the ‘audience’ in contact and building the follower list.

Moving outside of the top 5 – and you have a driver per country essentially (Mexico, Germany, Finland, Venezuela) before you get to Pedro de la Rosa. Looking at his Twitter, he doesn’t seem to tweet a lot, so this surprises me. I think it will probably be because he is Spanish and therefore has ‘the Alonso effect’. The same applies with Paul di Resta and the effect surrounding Button and Hamilton. Behind di Resta, you dip below 100 thousand and once you get below Karthikeyan’s Indian army you’re left with a cluster of F1 drivers’ – 9 drivers below 75 thousand. For those wondering why Felipe Massa is down there, he, like Alonso, only joined Twitter in late March, thus I expect him to clear 100 thousand sometime soon. It shall be interesting to monitor this list as drivers’ have good or bad races.

Teams
01 – 256,334 – Ferrari
02 – 181,267 – McLaren
03 – 123,449 – Mercedes
04 – 106,032 – Red Bull
05 – 101,231 – Lotus
06 – 70,884 – Caterham
07 – 62,442 – Marussia
08 – 60,587 – Force India
09 – 54,859 – Williams
10 – 48,315 – Sauber
11 – 44,168 – HRT
12 – 38,210 – Toro Rosso

Moving to the teams, and Ferrari on top shouldn’t be any surprise considering the huge worldwide appeal they have, not only in Europe. It also shows with as a brand Ferrari is important to Formula One. Behind them, you have the other important brands above 100 thousand – McLaren, Mercedes, Red Bull and Lotus. Someone is probably going to point out Red Bull’s other Twitter account Red Bull F1 Spy. I could have added 106,032 to the amount for that Twitter, but it maybe that nearly all of the Red Bull F1 Spy’s followers follow the other account so I could get a false result, which would defeat the purpose of this. Behind the main 5, you have Caterham in 6th who seem to have a loyal following from their Team Lotus days. Like in the drivers standings, you then have a cluster of teams, none of which are major brands. The only team likely to advance up that list is Williams, but only if they show the results on the track.

I’ll keep an eye on the Twitter followers every week as I said above, and post updates on here. Comments and thoughts, as always are welcome.

Driver and Team statistics as of Monday 30th April 2012.

Sky Sports F1 confirm Johnny Herbert as pundit for next 5 races

Sky Sports F1 have today confirmed on their Twitter account that Johnny Herbert will be part of their team for the Spanish Grand Prix, with Herbert being with the team from then through to the British Grand Prix.

As I noted several times in my ‘The Verdict so Far’ series, I think Herbert is an excellent pundit, thus I am pleased about this news. The tweet does not specifically confirm whether Herbert will be travelling to each of the five Grand Prix’s, but I suspect he will be.

I was considering watching BBC F1 next weekend had Herbert not been present with Sky Sports F1 (the Lazenby, Brundle and Hill line-up did nothing for me, mainly due to Hill’s woodenness), but this will, again make my viewing options difficult next weekend with Herbert back in the equation.

UPDATE at 17:45: Sky Sports F1’s online article is here, in which it is noted Johnny will be apart of The F1 Show and also provide ‘expert analysis’.

‘The Verdict so Far’ series – all five posts in one place

To save you looking for my posts in ‘The Verdict so Far’ series, of which the last blog went up earlier today, below is a link to each part:

– part 1: The Sky Sports F1 Team
– part 2: The BBC F1 Team
– part 3: Sky Sports F1’s weekend output
– part 4: Why Sky Sports F1’s mid-week programming needs a rethink
– part 5: The Ratings Picture

Enjoy! Alternatively, you can click on the Categories on the right-hand side, which directs you to all the posts on a particular subject.